Autumn :o)

It's definitely autumn. The leaves are finally changing and falling, and its cool enough to wear the sweaters I spend all year knitting.

Yesterday I made a big pot of soup, and boiled a chicken to make stock. The house smelled so good - just like fall.

I covered my garden Sunday night, thinking I'd protect it from a couple of cold nights since it's due to warm up again now, but my puny sheets didn't stand a chance against the cold - the dog's water froze, there was a thick layer of frost all over everything. My garden is, sadly, done, except for some spinach, lettuce, and beets that will hang out for awhile yet. I had a bunch of half-grown bell peppers and tons of green tomatoes, but I didnt' bother picking them because I thought I could save them a bit longer. Ah well. Now I can start ordering seed catalogs and planning for next year's garden. :o)

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We had a big tree cut down yesterday in the back yard in preparation for putting up a new fence. Now I need to call around and get fence estimates.

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We did a fun little fall project yesterday as part of Chloe's school. We walked around the neighborhood collecting twigs, bark, seeds and leaves from different trees. (In the meantime we met some sweet elderly neighbors from around the corner that I look forward to spending more time with.) When we got home with the leaves and such, we spread them out, matched everything up that went together, and used Modge Podge to glue them all to poster board. Then we made little "name cards" for each tree - an index card folded in half - and wrote the name of each tree inside. The ones we didn't know we looked up in a Field Guide for trees (and got sucked into looking at the book for awhile too.) Then each card was tacked onto the poster board so that you have to lift the card to see the tree name. It makes a sort of guessing game she can play with people who look at it. We call it the "lift & look tree book". Got the basic idea from a book called Organic Crafts, a book I got from the library but intend to buy.

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I've been knitting and sewing a lot lately. Made the girls some cute little fall dresses, started a scarf for myself after seeing all the cute scarves when we were shopping in Denver, and started on a hat inspired by one I saw on anthropologie.com. I wish I had the camera, I'd takes some pictures. I guess I'll have to break out the old camera and see if it still works.

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The keys on my keyboard are slightly sticky. I'm having an especially hard time with 'j'. I suppose that's what happens when children with sippy cups and sticky fingers are allowed to play computer games and watch videos.